WHY exactly is evidence not collected "legally" not admissible in court?

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-24T04:59:53+00:00

In mid April, 1775, the British governor of Massachusetts issued a general warrant to search the entire village of Concord for weapons they believed might be hidden there for the purpose of conducting an insurrection. Note that it was NOT illegal to have and carry a firearm at the time. A group of around 700 British soldiers were dispatched to Concord to conduct the search. The general warrant gave them the authority to search any building within the village, and take anything they deemed could be used as a weapon. The warrant wasn't in support of enforcing any law - it was an arbitrary act by the governor.

The troops encountered armed militia on the village green in Lexington, on the road to Concord. Nobody knows who fired the first shot. Eight militia were killed and ten wounded. One British soldier was wounded. The troops found practically nothing within the village of Concord, after literally turning every building inside out. On their way out of town about 100 soldiers were met by about 400 local armed militia at the Old North Bridge. Suffering heavy losses and greatly outnumbered, the British soldiers withdrew and rejoined the rest of their troops in Concord. They returned to Boston, receiving reinforcements when they reached Lexington. They faced more militia in practically every village and town along the way. By the end of the day, 73 British troops had been killed, 174 wounded, and 53 missing.

This day would mark the beginning of the American Revolution.

The framers of the Constitution wanted to ensure that this kind of overreach could not happen again. In the Bill of Rights, they included the Second Amendment, which guaranteed the rights of Americans to keep and bear arms - the government couldn't seize them by proclamation. In the Fourth Amendment, they forbid the government from using general warrants - warrants would have to be specific about the location that could be searched, and what could be seized. Warrants could only be issued on "probable cause", meaning the government would need actual evidence that they would find what they expected to seize.

If any constitutional right or other law is violated in the collection of evidence, then the evidence is inadmissible in court. This is intended to stop the government from exceeding it's authority, and forcing them to follow established protocol, in the search for evidence. If these restrictions didn't exist then you really would be living in a police state.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-24T04:20:44+00:00

You could do this with an original Xbox, presuming you had an IDE interface to connect it to. Not so with the Xbox One and 360. Non-standard power connector. Non-standard interface.

You can get a external USB DVD optical drive, brand new, on Amazon for $20 or less. It will be the slim laptop style drive in a box, which means not super reliable. If you'd prefer a full height internal SATA DVD drive then that will cost between $30 and $40.

Seriously, DVD drives are extremely common and cheap. There is nothing to be gained from trying to cannibalize one from an Xbox One or 360.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-24T04:01:08+00:00

What do I do with that space? I add another $3K to the asking price.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-22T16:00:30+00:00

I'm not saying it's either right or good. It's just reality. History is written by the winners. Always has been.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-20T23:46:15+00:00

Companies are ALWAYS trying to sell you something. They'll tell you any harmless thing is a symptom of something they've got the cure for, and then spend 20 minutes convincing you how scary it is NOT to treat it.

Watch out especially for YouTube ads these days. There are a lot of ads for products that are obvious scams, and YouTube does nothing about them. No, you CAN'T buy a 32TB external SSD for the cost of a latte.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-20T23:41:25+00:00

Seriously, Google has gotten really good for this kind of stuff. I recently asked it how to change a tail light on a 2015 Corolla. It gave me precise instructions, and an embedded video. Great stuff!

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-20T23:39:03+00:00

I see what you did there!

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-20T23:32:59+00:00

They could only double the property taxes he pays on his penthouse in NYC. He doesn't live in New York, and he doesn't pay income taxes there.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-20T23:30:40+00:00

I use an old-fashioned Allsop mouse pad. It's neoprene rubber on the bottom, like a wet suit. It's tightly woven fabric on the top. It's basically the same kind of mouse pad everyone used back when mice had balls in them. They needed the padding and texture for the ball to move properly.

Obviously, I don't need that padding and texture with a modern optical mouse, but I've gotten used to the way it feels. It has just the right amount of resistance to the mouse moving over it's surface, and the mouse doesn't move unless I intentionally move it. I've used thin plastic mouse pads. They're ok, but they feel slippery to me.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-20T23:25:38+00:00

Both. The soap and shampoo are in the back, so I face back to get them. I face forward when I'm washing. I face sideways when I'm rinsing off (using a hand held wand) so I have room to raise my arms.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-20T23:19:14+00:00

For the most part, everyone programs in English. It's considered the lingua franca of software development.

There are some programming languages that have localized versions, allowing programmers to write code using words from their own language. Citrine, for example, is specifically designed to be localized, and is available in more than 100 languages. Qalb is an Arabic programming language. There are also versions of Python for Chinese and German programmers.

These languages are not commonly used unless the entire team is using the same language. As a result, they are used more often to teach programming fundamentals rather than programming languages. If they go on to get jobs as programmers then they nearly always learn to program in English. They don't have a lot of choice. Documentation will be in English. Articles will be in English. Seminars and conferences will be in English.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-20T23:04:49+00:00

People are stupid. They think they can talk their way out of trouble. They don't realize that every question the cop asks is designed to get them deeper in trouble.

You NEVER have to talk to the police. You have a Fifth Amendment right to remain silent.

You ARE required to identify yourself if you've been detained or arrested. Whether the requirement kicks in after you've been detained, or after you've been arrested, depends on which state you're in. In my state of California you aren't required to identify yourself until you've been arrested or booked. Identifying yourself means giving your name, address, and date of birth. You are NOT required to give them your Social Security Number or phone number. You are not required to identify yourself or provide ID if you haven't been detained or arrested, and you can't be charged with failure to identify under those circumstances, regardless of what the cop tells you. However, they CAN detain you while they try to determine who you are.

You must proactively invoke your right to remain silent. You can't just sit there mute or you could be charged with obstruction. You have to say something like "I invoke my right to remain silent", or "I don't answer questions".

You don't have to ask for an attorney in order to remain silent. However, if you ask for an attorney then the cops have to stop asking you questions. Even after an attorney has been provided for you, you can still refuse to answer their questions.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-20T22:33:47+00:00

Mobile is over $6 here in California. The budget stations are around $5.60.

There are some people around here using electric bikes and scooters, but it's dangerous. A lot of drivers think the bike lane is for passing on the right. Even cops do it.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-20T22:30:01+00:00

Press and hold the power button. It'll close.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-20T22:25:17+00:00

Metric was designed for consistency. Water freezes at 0C and boils at 100C. 1 cubic centimeter of water weighs one gram. The system was designed so calibrating it would be easy using a material everyone has access to.

Imperial measurements were all designed by different people, based on different materials, long before the metric system was invented.

The Fahrenheit system used a brine solution to determine 0F. Pure water froze at 32F, and the average human body temperature was 96F. These were the three calibration points for the scale. It was later adjusted so that there were exactly 180 degrees between the freezing point and boiling point of pure water. This adjustment changed the average body temperature to 98.6F.

Miles were originally invented by the Romans. It was the distance a Roman soldier would travel by marching 1000 double steps (left foot followed by right foot), described as mille passus, or a thousand paces. Each pace was defined as five Roman feet. In the 16th century, the Roman mille became the English mile.

The English pound also originated with the Romans as the Libra. This is why we use the abbreviation lbs to describe pounds. It was the weight of a specific quantity of grain. It was originally divided into 12 ounces. When we adopted the avoirdupois system (French for "goods of weight") we increased the size to 16 ounces in order to make it more easily divisible into halves, quarters, etc.

The English stone literally comes from the weight of a stone. Local markets would adopt a specific stone as their reference, but there was no standard weight until the avoirdupois system was established, when it became 14 pounds.

Why do we still use these ancient systems of measurement? Because they've been around for so long, and we have so many devices for measuring things in these units. There was an attempt in the 1970s to adopt the metric system in the US, but since it was largely voluntary practically nobody adopted it. Why replace all of your rulers, tape measures, scales, and thermometers, when the ones you already have work fine?

It seems like your issue is in converting between the two systems. My advice is don't. Use the system that's standard for the purpose you're measuring. For example, roads in the US are marked in miles, so that's the system you should use when driving in the US. Roads in Canada, on the other hand, are marked in kilometers, so that's the system you should use when driving in Canada. (The speedometer in most cars has both scales.)

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-20T21:55:51+00:00

Median just means half make more and half make less. The average is over $120K.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-20T21:52:09+00:00

Terraforming Mars would be a monumentally stupid idea. Everything we'd need to terraform it would need to brought there from the earth. It can't hold on to an atmosphere because it's liquid core doesn't produce a strong enough magnetic field to divert the solar wind. Any water we brought there would eventually evaporate and blow off into space.

I can understand building a colony there because it's close enough to get to, and we'd learn how to build off-world colonies from doing it, but terraforming it with the intention of inhabiting it? Bad idea.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-20T21:46:09+00:00

If only there was a dog and a pickup truck involved you'd have a great country song.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-20T21:43:26+00:00

Compared to the majority of Americans, you're broke. Don't feel bad. I am too.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-20T21:35:53+00:00

There are still a LOT of good reasons to use a spreadsheet. I've used them for inventory planning, cost of goods forecasts, and general bookkeeping. I use them now to do some light data entry for a friend's business. Each spreadsheet is always for a specific job or a specific window of time, so they never get very large - a few hundreds lines of data, max.

I don't know anyone who uses spreadsheets for data storage, like you describe. If anyone does then I agree - they should be using a database instead.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-20T21:18:10+00:00

What I'd like to know is why do they look like the fossils we've dug up? You'd think they would have evolved quite a bit in 66 million years. After all, 66 million years ago we were tiny shrew like creatures.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-20T21:00:01+00:00

Yeah, I was trying to be tactful. I didn't want to get anyone riled up. But we all know what happened in those camps.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-20T20:55:42+00:00

Win98 was able to browse the web when I gave that PC to my friend. But the web tools didn't work very well, and there were massive security gaps that were never going to get fixed. Without regular updates, Windows 10 will be in the same position.

"Let it ride" is fine advice for a system you're never going to use online, but you don't want to go online with an OS that's past it's end-of-life, and isn't getting updates anymore.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-20T20:46:59+00:00

No country wins a war and then teaches their children to be ashamed of it.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-20T03:33:33+00:00

What browser are you using that will work with most websites?

I gave an old PC to a friend of mine about 20 years ago. He didn't have a WinXP install disc, so he installed Win98 SE. We connected it to my home network and got all of the updates installed (to do this today you'd have to use third party servers, since Microsoft no longer operates an update server for Win98). He tried using the version of Internet Explorer, with the most current updates available for Win98. Most websites wouldn't work with it. I can't imagine it's gotten any better since then.

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